"Our people are our most valuable asset” said almost every company in almost every annual report.
According to Paycor (https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/closer-look-at-labor-costs/) while labour costs relative to total costs vary between companies and industries, the average ratio is around 70% globally. In addition to this, significant time cost from management and HR teams is spent on organising and managing people within the organisation, making people costs by far the single most significant cost driver for most businesses.
With the ever-increasing requirements for responsible and sustainable management of companies, coupled with pressure from employees to meet the rapidly increasing cost of living globally, HR and finance teams are under pressure to ensure that the management of this significant cost is balanced with the need to maintain existing business, innovate for new products or services, and to grow.
Many companies have committed to a data-driven approach for the management of their finance and HR functions, but in many cases there is a lot of groundwork to be done before companies can effectively use various pieces of data to make better decisions and drive better outcomes.
While there are many different definitions of people analytics (also referred to as workforce analytics) in our view this spans the breadth of all matters relating to the management and analysis of any data related to the workforce. It is therefore not one specific tool, approach, or solution but rather a framework for approaching HR data with the same care and diligence as is often applied to other data such as that emanating from the finance, sales, call centre or customer service teams.
People analytics ranges from fairly basic descriptive analysis (i.e. what happened?) such as turnover rates, cost of hiring or revenue per head to name a few to diagnostic analysis (why did it happen?) to advanced machine learning and AI models, such as predictive turnover or advanced workforce planning models (i.e. what will happen?).
Image credit: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325934828_Opportunities_and_Challenges_of_Implementing_Predictive_Analytics_for_Competitive_Advantage
A clear, focused approach to analysing people data, including bringing data together from various systems such as finance, payroll, project management and HR systems is crucial to making well-informed people decisions at various levels of the organisation. This needs to be supported by efficient and clear reporting so that HR teams and key decision makers can spend sufficient time on the key people decisions rather than being stuck in administrative processes.
At QED, our goal is to empower you to manage, analyse and make sense of your workforce data, wherever that may reside. Using a unique blend of skills and supporting technologies, we are able to harness the power of the incredible volume of people data that most companies have at their disposal to drive better business decisions. We do not aim to reduce people to data points, rather we aim to use the data to assist leaders with better decision making to improve their employees experience and therefore improve business outcomes. As Richard Branson says: “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” Taking care of your employees starts with understanding your workforce deeply, and people analytics is the enabling framework to gain this understanding.
Moving towards a state where people data can be used effectively to make better business decisions requires a journey along the people analytics value chain. While it may be desirable to have access to people analytics tools and platforms that span the entire maturity spectrum of people analytics, as a starting point companies should ensure that they do the basics accurately, in as automated a manner as possible, while targeting the metrics and measures to impactful business outcomes.
No matter where you find yourself along this chain, QED can assist you to with a full suite of tools and solutions that suit your budget, to derive maximum return by leveraging your people data to ultimately release the full power of your workforce to perform at its very best.
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